Incredibly Unprofessional Environment - Easily the most unprofessional place I or anyone I know have worked at. Racist and sexist comments were routine. There were a few times when coworkers were on the verge of tears due to the incredibly unprofessional things that were said to them.
No matter why they left, former employees were bashed as soon as they leave, their accomplishments downplayed, their character disparaged, etc. It was especially weird because very little criticism was given when an employee was there. In my case, the CEO encouraged me to leave the company because the company’s outlook looked grim. However after I left, the CEO vocally condemned me for being disloyal and cracked inappropriate jokes at my expense at meetings. It may just be a case of really sour grapes, but it is very unprofessional nonetheless and contributes heavily to the toxic professional environment.
There is HR there but it was not very effective in detoxifying the environment.
Unstable revenue - vast majority of revenue comes from email marketing, which could dry up in an instant. There were many highs and some very lows for revenue while I was there. A tiny fraction of the revenue actually comes from CareDash. This made me question the long-term value of the company and my stock options because it was effectively an email marketing firm that is dumping millions each year into an unproved, unprofitable product.
Before joining, you should definitely ask what the current revenue, revenue distribution, and burn-rate. If you have outside financial obligations that would cause you to be risk-averse, think long and hard before joining.
Hard work was neither expected nor rewarded - The positive spin is calling the environment "laidback," but there were people who would do very little all day long. I considered that behavior to be not doing your job, not being "laidback." Unfortunately, hard work was not rewarded with differentiated compensation - all analysts made about the same amount. Management would attempt to placate people with a few more points of stock options during performance reviews, but it would not be made worth the effort. It was incredibly disheartening for more driven coworkers, several of whom left in part because of it.
When I would bring this up, management would present a false dichotomy of not being able to take time off, getting yelled at for being 5 minutes late vs. the "laidback" environment where some people did nothing week in and week out. It was very frustrating because I simply wanted people to be held more accountable for regularly watching YouTube videos and doing crossword puzzles at work.
Projects/Roles Assigned - Management did a bad job of matching people's skills and career goals with projects. There was also often a large divergence in how the role was described to people before joining and what they actually ended up doing. Several people quit due to this. Two examples of project mismatch are CS majors running adwords accounts and math majors making content. It was almost entirely on you to seek out roles/projects based on your skills and career goals, which ought be done or at least helped by your manager.
Unchallenging Work - The work was not challenging at all. I felt like my skills greatly atrophied during the time I spent there.
Turnover - there is very high turnover. There's a decent chance that your interviewers will no longer be at the company when you actually come on board. The high turnover causes a lot of internal knowledge to be lost and puts people into managerial roles who should not be there. There have been a lot of great, talented people to leave the company in part due to some combination of the cons that I have listed here.
The problems with turnover hold true for the company that incubates CareDash, Cogo Labs. Cogo has lost a TON of talent over the past 6-12 months.
Compensation - not good. Part of it is in stock options, which you ought do your homework in considering your offer. Management didn't give me an opportunity to even discuss my compensation during performance reviews, which was a contributing factor to me leaving the company.
Management - CEO has a very bad habit of saying whatever he thinks will get him out of the situation with seemingly little to no intention of following up on it. Several former employees felt like they were misled by the CEO with regards to their position when they joined. CEO did not seem to have a good idea of people's contributions. Some of the cultural problems were a direct result of the CEO's behavior.
